I was just reading a couple of articles online about traveling with our environment in mind. Some of the articles that really caught my eye were online at Travel Weekly by Jeri Clausing and Mexico Premiere by the Mexican Tourism Board. Both are such a great articles and fit in perfectly with our "Go Green" theme this month I couldn't help but share them with you! Please read Clausing's entire Travel Weekly article and The Mexican Tourism Board's article online, but I will summarize some of the great points I found! I decided to separate the posts for easier reading. If you would like to know more about the Mexican Tourism Board’s article see the post “Still Going Strong, Still Going Green.”
Travel Weekly--My favorite part was that it highlights two of my favorite resorts! The Banyan Tree Mayakoba and Hacienda Tres Rios. Like you will find the article mentions, I didn't even realize all the actions are being taken to "Go Green" at these locations!
These hotels are romantically earthy. You are in the heart of nature, feeling intimacy like never before. Most people hate traveling, or going to Islands because they think of the commercialization. Even Florida has sky scrapers and buildings all over the coast line! However, you have the opposite feel at these resorts. The corporate VP of the Americas for Banyan Tree, John Searby states it perfectly, "This is the antithesis of Cancun." Myakoba goes above and beyond the typical resort considerations of sustainability.
Clausing highlights the resort’s efforts of maintaining and improving the surrounding water resources and conservation. Now you can tell your friends you’re doing a lot more than just turning the water off when you brush your teeth—you’re conserving on your vacation. Environmentalists need to vacation in style too after all!
Some of the major issues Clausing highlights are some of the things that you, like I, may not even realize a hotel is doing to stay Green. However, we want you to know the facts; we want you to appreciate all the efforts these resorts are doing to preserve the wilderness.
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To minimize the resort’s carbon footprint, local materials were used wherever
possible for construction and furnishings. Everything from its cooling plants to
construction techniques were designed to take the environment into account. Although there is plenty of water in Mexico, the resort pumps all of its water from the ocean, then purifies it in a desalination plant rather than drawing water from underground aquifers. The hotel also uses cold water from deep wells to pre-cool its air-conditioning system. The same system then captures the heat from the air-conditioning system to warm water to within 10 degrees of the temperature needed for hot showers.
Parts of the buildings were prefabricated, which helped reduce the amount of equipment on site.
"Normally during construction, animals move away," said Gabriel Santoyo, Tres Rios’ environmental officer. "We had a higher count because we created a new aquatic ecosystem, so now, many migrating birds stop here."
Mazarambroz said Mayakoba had seen a similar increase in birds and wildlife. Santoyo knows there are new birds because part of his job is to constantly monitor the flow of the rivers and lakes as well as the plant and wildlife on the resort grounds and adjoining park.
During construction, the resort rescued 4,000 plants representing 11 endangered or protected species and now maintains a nursery to nurture many of them. It also recycled all construction-related materials, right down to the bottles containing the water consumed by workers.
The resort was developed by Orlando Arroyo Marroquin, whose Sunset Group also owns the Sunset Lagoon Resort & Yacht Club in Cancun, the Sunset Fishermen Spa & Resort in Playa del Carmen and 20 other tourism-related service companies.
Many green features in the guest rooms are not apparent. For instance, there is no slot that requires a key card for the electricity to work. With such systems, Santoyo said, a guest need only leave a business card in the slot to keep the air conditioning and lights running.
Instead, each room has motion detectors that shut things down if there is no
movement within a certain period of time. Likewise, there is no card instructing guests on options for changing towels. The maids in my room left me piles of clean towels, but used towels that were left hanging were not removed.
There are no recycle bins, but resort officials said all trash was sorted before
being taken out.”
Sustainability isn’t just a trend, it is here to stay. Companies globally are recognizing the responsibilities to the environment and wild life. These hotels are two of the first in their industry to take the bull by the horns. They are serious about being green, and are constantly finding new ways to improve the existing policies and practices.
The article starts off:
"RIVIERA MAYA, Mexico-- One of the first hings I noticed when we pulled off the
highway between Cancuna nd Playa del Carmen onto the new Hacienda Tres Rios
resort was the driveway.
Instead of being paved with asphalt or concrete, it was made of crushed limestone, like the paths and roads that serve nearby ancient Mayan ruins. The drive winds through an eco-park of flora, wildlife and rivers, then pulls up to what looks like a typical modern, all-inclusive Riviera Maya resort.
But Tres Rios, like the nearby Mayakoba resort, is anything but typical. Both are examples of a new breed of environmentally conscious resorts being developed around the world. They combine all the creature comforts of traditional four- and five-star hotels with nature and behind-the-scenes technologies that go far beyond the towel-and-sheet reuse programs that until recently defined most hotels’ environmental efforts.
Tres Rios and Mayakoba are hybrids in the world of environmentally friendly
hospitality. They are not eco-resorts in the strict sense of the word, the kind
found in places such as Costa Rica, which tend to supplement electricity needs
with solar power and serve only locally grown foods. But they have incorporated
the latest in green construction, technologies and practices.
By employing water desalination plants, special cooling machines that reduce air-conditioning costs and ultramodern construction techniques such as pilings that enable large hotels to be built over underground rivers without disturbing their flow, these two resorts are transforming development along the Yucatan Peninsula.”
“Javier Aranda Pedrero, director of the Riviera Maya Destination Marketing Office, said that after observing the development of Mayakoba, and then Tres Rios, local, state and federal officials are in the process of writing new development rules for the area.
"Mayakoba is the model," he said, "and the people from Hacienda Tres Rios have worked very, very well with sustainable development of hotels and protecting all the area that they have for mangroves."
While hotel development here, like in much of the world, is in a lull because of the economy, Aranda said he expects it to pick up again in 2010. By then, he said, the government should have new development guidelines based on lessons learned at the two resorts.”
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